Ever wonder what happens to that asshole who starts screaming obscenities and throwing stuff during the fourth quarter, before getting dragged out by stadium police (after the drunk tank, anyway)? That morning-after regret is Dr. Ari Novick's territory. Starting this season, the NFL has teamed up with Novick, a certified anger management specialist, to create a mandatory Fan Conduct class for every malcontent who gets ejected during a game. The four-hour online class covers everything from alcohol abuse and improving judgment to developing good communication skills. Curious to learn Novick's anger and stress management techniques? Two ways through this one: pick a fight with the kid sitting next to you at next week's game, or read our Q&A.

Welcome to the Ball Baron, where we break down the finer points of Sunday's NFL action.

UGLIEST LOSS: Your dismissal of the Giants' accomplishments as sheer luck
As a card-carrying hater, I have a cheat sheet that provides me with a list of shorthand reasons for why the history of any NFL team is tainted. The Steelers get all the calls. The Patriots are cheaters. And the Giants, obviously, are the luckiest team on the face of the earth. Anyone looking to discredit New York's last two Super Bowl wins can do so merely by pointing out their pedestrian regular season record and saying, "They just got on a hot streak," as if hot streaks are some kind of magical gift that Eli Manning and Tom Coughlin found in a nearby attic. They peaked at the right time. They caught their opponents at a time when their opponents happened to be faltering. And of course Eli Manning threw that big pass to Victor Cruz to win their game against the Redskins yesterday. Have you seen the Redskins secondary? It's made out of wet saltines. They were LUCKY to play against a secondary that horrible.

Welcome to the Ball Baron, where we break down the finer points of Sunday's NFL action.

UGLIEST LOSS: Your preseason expectations.
The incredible thing about preseason NFL predictions is that, when they're relatively uniform, they can begin to feel like fact. Take the Bills, for instance. It was assumed that, since the Bills have a soft schedule and a decent roster on paper, they were clearly the #2 team in the AFC East behind the Patriots. It was also widely assumed (by me!) that the Jets were on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Then Buffalo came into the Meadowlands yesterday and received a curb-stomping so thorough that it rendered all of those seemingly concrete assumptions worthless in a matter of minutes.

The New York Knicks letting Jeremy Lin walk out the door—for nothing—was the dumbest decision in the history of professional sports.

But let's forget about that for a moment. The words "dumb" and "Knicks" are so interchangeable at this point that the notion of the franchise choosing an option with a $15 million downside (the excess luxury tax the team faced if it matched Houston's offer) over an option with a billion dollar downside (Lin's potential career marketing value if he kept up his level of play) is actually unsurprising. This is the Knicks. This is what they do. Let's move on. Let's have the other conversation, the one nobody seems to want to have because "dumb" seems to explain it all. No, dumb explains 98 percent of it. Let's talk about the other 2 percent.

The moment I knew for certain that the Knicks were done with Jeremy Lin was on Sunday, July 15, when Carmelo Anthony publicly called Lin's offer from the Houston Rockets "ridiculous."
At that point, the Knicks were still saying their minds weren't made up, and maybe that was true—maybe they were only 99 percent sure. Even still, Melo's remark was like an X-ray of his psyche, and, because Melo is the only person other than owner Jim Dolan who really matters in the Knicks organization, it was a glimpse into what the entire franchise thinks about Lin.

What's relevant here is not whether Melo was right or not about Lin's contract. Plenty of NBA players surely agree with him. What's relevant is that he said it out loud. Bad-mouthing another player's deal is a serious breach of the unwritten code among pro athletes, which is why it happens so rarely, no matter how many stupid deals get handed out, no matter how many franchises are crippled by bad contracts, no matter how many superstars find their paths to a title blocked by the bonehead decisions of their teams' front offices. It's also why, conversely, players almost always praise each others' deals in public, and offer congratulations – we've all seen the tweets – for getting every penny that the market could generate. It's a fraternity.

Apparently, to Melo, Jeremy Lin is not in the fraternity. Or at least, Lin's place in it is dubious enough that he has not earned the omerta that every other player gets. Anybody wanna try to convince me it has zero to do with Lin being Asian-American?
Because, and let's cut to the quick, Carmelo Anthony never ever would've made that remark about a black NBA player's contract, and I doubt that he ever would've said it about a white player's, either. If Melo thought that Lin was being wildly overpaid but still, fundamentally, belonged in the club, he would've kept his mouth shut. He didn't because he doesn't.

From the beginning, Melo has always been the Knick most threatened by Linsanity, and the most skeptical about it. There is no question that Lin's ethnicity is a huge factor in his popularity—a bigger factor, even, than his actual play on the court, as splendid as it has been—but there's also no question that Lin's ethnicity is a huge factor in the ongoing suspicion that his marvelous play thus far is a mirage. Now obviously I can't read Carmelo Anthony's mind, but it sure seems like he still believes what a lot of people did in those flush first few days of his meteoric rise: Lin can't really be this good because he doesn't look like a guy who's really this good.

(A quick aside: Lin's three year, $25 million contract isn't "ridiculous." It's a great deal for the Rockets, who get a bargain for two years and at worst an expiring contract / trade asset in the third. It arguably would've been ridiculous for the Knicks because of luxury-tax implications, but when you have the Knicks' contract history to defend, and Jim Dolan's bottomless wealth, what exactly does ridiculous mean? Before you answer, consider that in the last year of Carmelo's deal alone, he will make … $24 million. Let's hope he's won more than one playoff game for the Knicks by then. The average salary in the NBA is a bit over $5 million. Lin's contract classifies him as "above average." Is paying Lin the salary of an above average NBA player really "ridiculous"? So ridiculous that he should be called out publicly for it?)

And then there's Jim Dolan, whose fury over Lin's "betrayal" has leaked over the last 72 hours into every single sports publication with a working NBA beat reporter. There's no point in parsing the reasons why Dolan feels betrayed and whether they're valid. The real question is, why is Dolan taking it so personally? Lin was reportedly disappointed the Knicks told him to shop around in the first place—he wanted to stay put—but he got over it. Why was Lin aggressively testing the market (i.e., doing what the Knicks told him to do) such an affront? Could it be that he thought the nice, quiet, devout Christian Taiwanese kid would be too cowed by The Great Man to play hardball over money? Could it be that he thought he owned Lin, had made him, and became furious when Lin refused to behave like it? Could it be that he expected Lin to be more – ethnic stereotype alert – submissive?

And how do we explain leaks about Dolan (reportedly) using words like "betrayed" and "deceived" to describe Lin over the same weekend that newly acquired Knick Jason Kidd got so fall down drunk that he crashed his car into a tree—with nary a word of criticism from Dolan? Jeremy Lin is the bad guy here?

I'm doing more mind-reading here with Dolan—never a safe proposition. But here's what I am confident saying about Dolan on the subject of Lin's ethnicity: he has absolutely no grasp of what Jeremy Lin really means as a cultural phenomenon. It does not pierce his bubble. It stirs no emotion in him. He doesn't understand what it means for millions of people in this country, and around the world, to watch the first Asian-American superstar athlete excel on the highest stage, and what it means to have that player wearing the uniform of his team. The pride, the joy, the inspiration, the transformative effect it can have on an entire generation of kids.

That stuff is real. It only becomes hokey when people like me try to capture it with words on a page. If Dolan got that, he never would've let the Lin situation unravel over scratch money (to him, anyway) and petty animus. He would've sat the kid down, talked it out, buried the hatchet. And then he would've signed the deal.

Instead Dolan let him walk away. For nothing. Go ahead and call it stupid. Just don't say that's all it is.

This year's playoff darlings? It looks like it can't be Andrew Bynum, Indestructible Weapon. And let's face it, East side uplifters Indiana and Philly aren't long for the postseason even if they make it past their Goliath-sized opponents this round. Surprise, it's the Spurs. The team once synonymous with boredom and at the same time, a clear-headed, highly-adaptive basketball machine whose mascot is quite aptly a coyote. We've known for years that the Spurs can score. Somehow, though, it's different this time. Maybe, in typical Spurs fashion, they are filling a void. In this case, it's a void of buzz. But San Antonio has arrived as a team to talk about. If nothing else, they're recognized as one to admire, not just nebulously fear. You would expect at least that much for a squad that finished with the NBA's best record. But this isn't about numbers. It's about relevance. People are talking about the Spurs. That never happens.

James Goldstein isn't just another basketball fan. A Lakers season ticket holder since 1961, you may have seen him sitting with Kanye West during fashion week, noticed his house on the cover of Architectural Digest, or read about his romance with Jayne Mansfield. He keeps the specifics of his wealth and power vague, but his clout is unmistakable. Always courtside, draped in couture and topped off with those signature wide brimmed hats, he's recognizable during any broadcast. During the regular season, Goldstein attends practices and press conferences, even occasionally popping up in the locker room. During the NBA Playoffs, he criss-crosses the map, attending as many games as possible and constantly reminding us how enmeshed he is in the league's fabric. It's not even surprising to watch Lakers coach Mike Brown address him from the podium, as he did Wednesday night. There's been much written about Jimmy, but it's still rare to hear from the man himself. So GQ asked him to check in with us periodically during this year's playoffs and tell us about his experiences. This is his first dispatch.

Kyrie Irving not only averaged 18 points a game as a rookie, but he gave one of the most struggling sports franchises in the country hope that one day they'll witness something great again. The newly crowned Rookie of the Year swung by the GQ office to tell us his playoff predictions, what it's like to play after LeBron and—ya know, what most 20-year-old professional athletes want to talk about—his favorite musicals.

We haven't had much reason so far this postseason to comment on Russell Westbrook, hero of this blog, largely because the Thunder are rolling and Westbrook is playing half-sane. However, this week found another way to tickle our outrageous bone, with a post-game look that best summed up as Sally Jesse Raphael-esque.

The Heat, the NBA's drab and reluctant villains, lost to Indiana last night. That puts the series at 2-1; the Pacers have taken away home court advantage, the Heat have proven how bad off they are without Chris Bosh, and Dwyane Wade was the goat for a change. It was a humiliating and crushing defeat, which isn't completely unheard of. Except in this case, it has a chilling effect on the series. And the outcome of this series is, like most things in life, about LeBron James.

The second round of the NBA playoffs means fewer games and fewer excuses to not watch them all. We're in the conference semis, people; straighten up and pay attention! That said, not all series are created equal and not all postseasons rock with the same caliber, even if they all trounce the regular season by comparison. Here are 2012's second-round matchups ranked in terms of some combination of watchability, world-historical importance, and overall relevance to the sport of basketball.